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warriorscot

Posted 04 December 2005 - 05:22 PM

warriorscot

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8,889 posts

For the AMD system PC3200 will do it just fine, personally i would go with the athlon or an x2 cpu, what kind prices are you lookin at in your budget for cpu, mobo or possibly ram, and how much of your current ram do you have and in what configuration(how many sticks).

lamuskrat

Posted 04 December 2005 - 05:42 PM

lamuskrat

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Topic Starter

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37 posts

price for CPU, MB and ram approx 1400.- 1500.00

I have a p4 3.06 with 1 gig of ram (2 x 512) at present, saw a pc on tv talking about the dual core, just wanting to upgrade (since wife is allowing me to spend...lol)
but in all honesty my old system (athalon 2000+) was s sweet machine and seems to run as fast as this p4 (to the eye, not benchmarked)

jrm20

Posted 05 December 2005 - 01:37 PM

warriorscot

Posted 05 December 2005 - 01:40 PM

warriorscot

Member 5k

Retired Staff

8,889 posts

Well to me you have enough money to buy one really good NEW PC, and you would still have the old one as well for the wife leaving you with your own new rig.

Mobos you have a multitude of choice what kind of uses do you use your PC for and is their something you would like to be able to do on your new or upgraded PC specifically. But you have alot of money to spend so you are pretty flexible.
The biggest factor about your budget is wether or not you are a gamer, if you are then you will probably want to spend more money on gfx and a little less on the CPU.

fsb1284

Posted 05 December 2005 - 01:57 PM

fsb1284

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41 posts

That is exactly what I was saying. I personally don't like to get a whole new rig until I really need it. Then again, I don't have a lot of money to work with. If I did, however, I would NOT sink all of my money into the "top of the line" CPU. CPUs now are so fast that the numbers of today can sometimes affect price more than performance-esp. with Intel processors. I like to sink my big dollars into the graphics card- a 512MB graphics card, for example. The fastest, largest quantity of RAM I can afford is important to me as well.

As for the AMD vs Intel debate, I had first hand experience with an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ and a 1.7GHz PIV system, and the PIV seemed to game better. That was a while ago, and I cannot offer first hand advice as to the performance of Intel's dual-core vs AMD's comparable processor. What I do know, however, is that with the system I mentioned and with today's processors, AMD won the price war. There's no question that AMD processors povide for a cheaper and cooler system.

That's another point- what cooling system were you going to go with? There's no way you're going to get away with a fan if you're going with Intel. A good Zalman heatpipe or copper-core HSF will cool an AMD processor. You're almost obligated to use water cooling with the Intel, though.

lamuskrat

Posted 05 December 2005 - 06:18 PM

lamuskrat

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37 posts

Glad to know that you're looking out for my best interest and stop me from being stupid in a no stupid zone....lol. I don't do all that much on the pc (alot of internet, downloading, and an occasional rip/burn music). My wife on the other hand is into music, dvds (burning) and digital photo (and wishes to learn editing), but she has her own pc (nothing spectacular). I just figured since I had the $$$$ now would be the time to upgrade.

So ram and graphics is all you would suggest and not upgrading from the 3.06 ghz P4 w HT (which I never understood the hyper threading part and if it actually does that or if that was a sales pitch)

I will say that my sons old Athalon 2000+ is still running in top form and I think it is almost as fast as this P4......